In the warm recesses of the mind, there grows a desert land that is parched on the surface, but inwardly fed by an underground river whose waters carry a medicine for the sun and whose body is displayed for both seeker and seers as a grove of date palms[1] lifting the hidden beauty of water into the dust-dried air.

Seeing as how the earth offers a reflective surface for all internal happenings, there are many places that present this same way. Afghanistan is one of them. Iraq is another. But here: Egypt.

Egypt is a place where gold might spontaneously rise up out of the sand like ice cubes in a fruit smoothie, as easily as it may paint the eyes, nose, mouth, and fingernails during sleep, suffocating the organic matter with intention for what lies beyond.

Egypt is the place where a dark-fingernailed hand pulled a tiny slip of paper out of one abalone slot in an ashtray, just seconds after placing a rouged cigarette in the neighboring groove. The owner of the fingernails ran a pair of onyx eyes over the English words, which were instantly sent to the mouth where they took shape in the absentminded sensuousness of a whisper:

to go into the dark with a light

is to know the light

to know the dark, go dark

go without sight

and find that the dark, too

blooms and sings

and is traveled by dark feet

and dark wings

~W. Berry~

The poem was rolled thoughtfully back into its little scroll. The cigarette was finished, slowly, with the flourish and curl of a dancer. The feet attached to the fingernails, the eyes, and the mouth stepped swiftly into a dim building overlooking the sunbright waters. A pair of birds watched the door close from the nearest palm, taking flight as neon signs flickered on in the doorway and windows of the establishment. One flashed the outline of beer and palm trees, alternately. One scripted out the lavish shapes of a phonetic marvel, which, when translated into English, read “Dance the Nile.”[2] One spelled out in the blocky capital letters of the modern[3] Roman Empire, “OPEN.”

-**

 

 

1. Phoenix dactylifera. For the etymology nerds out there.
2.  رقص النيل
3. “Modern” means pitiful geezer tour, right?